The Blame Game

by C. J. Cooke

  ‘Did you know I never once told Saskia that I danced?’ I say weakly. I’m not sure who exactly I’m speaking to, but Jeannie answers.

  ‘You can still tell her,’ she says, tugging at a tat in my hair.

  ‘When she said she wanted to take ballet lessons I didn’t think much of it. Her friends all did ballet. She liked dressing up. But she’s so good at it. A born dancer. I started to think that maybe one day she’d go to dance school. And I’d tell her that I used to do that. I used to picture her expression when she saw the posters of me dancing in London, Prague … She’d probably not even believe me. But I thought maybe she would be proud.’

  ‘She will be, Helen.’

  She helps me take off my clothes and pull my nightie over my head. I get a clear view of my body in the mirrored wardrobe door. I’ve lost weight and am floral with bruises. The trace of the seatbelt runs diagonally across my chest and belly in a turmeric stripe. The contours of my face are reconfigured in shades of plum and merlot. Every movement is astonishingly painful.

  I pull back the bedclothes and automatically lie on my side of the bed, as though Michael might appear and climb in beside me. A peck on the forehead. Goodnight, love. The impossibility of his absence, his strange and sinister departure not just from the hospital but from the country in which, for all he knows, me and the kids were stranded, maybe even incarcerated, has me in a near-constant state of bewilderment. Like being on a merry-go-round someone has set to spin much too fast, and on which I have to stay while attempting to cope with everything else. Saskia’s failed resuscitation. Reuben’s anxieties about his father’s whereabouts. The unshakeable certainty that even here, in my own home, I am being watched by someone who wants to kill me.

  Jeannie is telling me how she’ll take Reuben to school and collect him at the end of each day, how she’ll drive up and down to the hospital to see Saskia. I look her over, and gratitude blooms in me like a peony in a field of thistles and briars. When did she become this person, a helpful, selfless adult?

  When my mother brought Jeannie home from the hospital I was over-awed with protectiveness and maternal love. I even named her after a woman who worked at my school and who was always very kind. Mum was an alcoholic, and true to my expectations she quickly went back to her old ways, leaving Jeannie and me alone for days at a time. I was only ten years old but became very adept at looking after her. It was the school holidays so nobody noticed, but when I had to go back to school in September I was terrified at what might happen to the baby. A teacher challenged me about my absences. Two weeks later, Jeannie and I were in foster care. I insisted that we wouldn’t be separated. I remember the foster family complained that I was ‘interfering’ because of how I fought to care for Jeannie.

  I guess I’ve always mothered her, and in ways that made her increasingly entitled and manipulative. Michael found out I was still sending her money every month and hit the roof. I knew it wasn’t normal to still pay your little sister’s rent when she was in her mid-twenties and working full time, but I felt guilty. And even when I finally recognised that she was using me, I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it.

  Perhaps she’s using you now, a voice whispers in my head, but I push it away.

  No, I won’t sabotage this. People can change.

  Michael’s books are on his side table. A spiral notebook sits on the top of the pile with a pen lodged in the metal spiral binding. I ask Jeannie to pass the notebook and flip through it, just in case there is something there. To-do lists for the bookshop, a few quotes from the books he was reading. Some notes about his dreams, which I didn’t realise he kept track of. Dreams about Saskia running away, Reuben getting lost. Again and again, a dream about a door of flame with paradise on the other side. He’s underlined a comment.

  This time I asked Helen if she’d open it with me. Woke up before she answered.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jeannie asks.

  ‘He wrote down his dreams. I never knew he did that. Eighteen years together and I’m still finding stuff out about him.’ Except why he left.

  She looks over the notes, squints. ‘A door of flame? What’s that about?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  On one page I find sums that have no clear context but which I guess are to do with bills. But on the next page, the numbers resemble dates, with phrases written next to them in Michael’s barely-legible scrawl:

  5/4/17 – same guy as yesterday outside shop just hanging around

  7/4/17, 3.15pm – same guy, black car, black coat, around corner from shop. Pakistani? Think taking pics !!!

  8/4/17, 8.05am and 6pm – man in black car again outside Post Office

  13/4/17, 11.17am – outside Reuben’s school

  14/4/17, 6.30pm followed me home

  ‘Are those dreams, too?’ Jeannie says, craning her head to look. ‘Followed me home?’

  I frown at the notes, trying to make sense of the dates. April. ‘I don’t know.’

  A noise downstairs. The front door. It opens and closes. Quickly I get out of bed and look out the window at the street outside. A black car is parked haphazardly on the pavement. My guts churn, bile rising to my mouth. A man’s voice calls up the stairs.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Jeannie says when she sees me looking alarmed. ‘It’s just Shane.’

  ‘Hello?’ Shane calls upstairs.

  ‘Hi, darling,’ Jeannie calls back. ‘Just upstairs. I’ll be with you in a few moments.’

  ‘Shane?’

  I stare at her, speared with sudden anger that she’s invited him into my home without asking first. Who is he? When did things turn so serious between them? My mind turns to the recording of his voice on Reuben’s iPad.

  Never been to Mexico.

  25

  Reuben

  5th September 2017

  Roo: Malfoy u there??

  Malfoy: Yes. Are you OK?

  Roo: Yeah back home now

  Malfoy: In England?

  Roo: Yeah In my bedroom Dad’s not here tho

  Malfoy: Do you know where he is?

  Roo: no. Some policemen came today to talk to mum it made my tummy funny ☹

  Malfoy: What did they say? Do they have any leads?

  Roo: Leads?? Why would they have leads???

  Malfoy: I mean information on your dad’s current location.

  Roo: I thot you meant computer leads! No they don’t. Nobody nose anythin

  Malfoy: That’s a shame.

  Roo: Thanx for sending me trapdoor partcualr btw. Its amazing!

  Malfoy: You’re welcome. Thanks for the recording of your mum and all the people outside your house.

  Roo: They all came 2 welcome us home

  Malfoy: Where’s your mum now?

  Roo: I’m gunna do an animation of a blue whale instead of a Mayan village

  Malfoy: Oh? How come?

  Roo: idk. I liked doing the scale model of the Maya temple but Saskia liked the whales we saw and I thot it wud be nice 4 her to see an animation of them when she wakes up

  Malfoy: I bet she’d love that.

  Roo: U think so?

  Malfoy: Definitely. And blue whales are v interesting creatures.

  Roo: Am learning lots about them! They’re enormous! And endangered and nobody nose much about them and theres hardly any YouTube footage of them b/c their hard to find and so big that you cant get to close in case u get hurt

  Malfoy: I can help with your animation if you like? Are you planning on showing the whale breach?

  Roo: I think so. Can blue whales breech? There like 100 ft long!!!!!

  Malfoy: do some research. It would be amazing to have an animation of it breaching but you want it to be realistic, too. If it does breach, I think you’ll need Cinema 4D. It’s a software for more complex movements. I can give you that.

  Roo: YES! ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺

  Malfoy: Where is your mum right now?

  Roo: She’s downstairs y??

  Malfoy: Is she a
lone?

  Roo: No aunt jeanie’s here.

  Malfoy: I’d like more footage of her. Can you send me more clips?

  Roo: k. What of?

  Malfoy: Your mum and aunt.

  Roo: k

  Malfoy: Reuben, I feel I should tell you something but it’s potentially very dangerous. Do you think you can keep a secret?

  Roo: Yes

  Roo: What is it?

  Roo: You can tell me

  Malfoy: Never mind.

  Roo: Malfoy, are you still there?

  Roo: Malfoy?

  26

  Michael

  5th September 2017

  The train lights flicker in a garish Morse code as we enter the tunnel, all the colours muted by the absence of daylight. The lights go out completely, the minty glow of the EXIT sign transforming the carriage into something out of a David Lynch movie.

  I think about the dream of the door of flame, how the door is always both a relief and a terror because it is a light amidst the darkness of the world I’m trying to leave behind. That’s always the pull – to move past pain and terror with my family to a better life. Maybe this journey is what the dream was always about. Luke’s family have been hunting me for years, and now they know where we live. The door of flame is that pain barrier of confronting them. Of facing the past.

  There’s a woman a couple of seats in front of me, heavily pregnant. She looks uncomfortable and keeps trying to shift position to accommodate her massive belly. I think back to when Helen was pregnant with Saskia, the bigger her belly got the more stressed out Reuben became. He didn’t understand what was happening to her body. It was heart-wrenching and cute at the same time. He was six, still in nappies, spoke no more than a handful of words. Mummy. Daddy. OK. Love you. Our beautiful boy, with flopping brown hair, a sweet, freckled face, and large chocolate-brown eyes that would soften the heart of a monster.

  Helen and I didn’t need language to communicate with our son because we knew him through and through, and because those beautiful eyes of his told a thousand stories. But it was as though there was an imperceptible membrane between him and the rest of the world, and for the most part he was happy there. Until he saw Helen’s belly turning slowly into a mountain and he freaked out.

  When Saskia was born I was worried that Reuben might harm her by accident. I knew he wouldn’t intend to do it, but he was still prone to epic tantrums and occasional violence. At twenty inches long and a mere six pounds four ounces she reminded me of a little bird, starkly tiny and fragile in contrast to her tall, heavy-handed seven-year-old brother. I had to watch him like a hawk and be on guard at all times.

  But he was incredibly tender with her. He kissed her and fretted when she seemed unsettled. When she screamed the house down he covered his ears with his palms but didn’t scream and rock as he often did with other noises. He’d go into the other room and wait until it was silent again, and then he’d return and watch her with an awe-struck expression.

  We’re coming out of the tunnel, now, a needle-head of light ahead dilating. The pregnant lady takes a sigh, rubs her belly and winces as an elbow or foot momentarily makes a shape in her black T-shirt, kicking her from the inside out. She’s got both legs straightened, laid on the seats in front. With a smile I think of the last few weeks of pregnancy, how Helen struggled with it. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat for fear of acid reflux, couldn’t tolerate the slightest amount of incompetence.

  Some of our friends broke up shortly after having a child. I don’t blame them. Having a kid changes the quality of your relationship completely. It’s like walking on a tightrope and then suddenly having to carry a python or a seal while still navigating that thin, wobbling path to the other side. But in our case, the kids brought us closer together. Maybe, deep down, Helen and I are equally determined to make sure that our children don’t experience the same childhoods as we had.

  When I was younger my goal was to be a footballer. I was crap at it. I always got good marks in English Literature, though, and I had this teacher who I secretly pretended was my real dad. Mr Biscup. He was so passionate about Chaucer that it rubbed off on to me. He encouraged me to apply for university, so I did, and somehow I got a place at Oxford. I thought someone was having a laugh. But I loved it, every second of it. My goal was to do a Master’s degree then a PhD, and one day end up as a Professor of Medieval Literature.

  One decision derailed that dream for ever.

  After Mont Blanc I dropped out and spent years pinballing from one dead-end job to another: cleaning fish guts in a factory, scrubbing toilets, then a fairly long stint in crisis clean-up, which involved cleaning the gore left behind after murders, suicides, biohazard accidents and unattended deaths. Surprisingly well paid. It exposed me to a world very much like the one Chaucer inhabited during the Black Plague. Better than reading about it at a distance – an Oxbridge distance, at that. People starving to death because their benefits hadn’t been paid and decomposing on a sofa. Or a life blasted all over a room, the narrative of that life and its trajectory turned to detritus. We were the first ones there, straight after the police or forensic guys. I can’t explain why it felt good to clean up something as gruesome as those scenes, restore order, but it did.

  The tunnel ends; a patchwork quilt of green fields fans out beyond the window. In the glass of the window I see a man sitting a few rows in front on the opposite aisle wearing a black baseball cap, ‘NYC’ in white letters. He’s looking directly at me, his face twisted in a scowl, and when I turn to stare back he lowers his head. A fierce twitch runs all the way across me. I only caught a glimpse of him but he looked familiar. I slide my eyes back to the glass without turning my head and sure enough he’s lifted his head and is looking straight at me again. I don’t move a muscle but inside I’m screaming. I know his face. I’d know it anywhere, I’d know it. His face, his voice, his mannerisms – Luke is branded on my memory for ever.

  I’m just about to get up and change cabins to see if he follows when he gets up, picks up a black backpack and sidesteps into the seat directly behind me. I’m sweating like a tap. I hear a zip being pulled across the backpack and I wait for it, resigned to the inevitable.

  Be quick about it, Luke.

  A female voice on the tannoy announces loudly that we’re arriving into Gare du Nord. In my head I count quickly to three and jump to my feet, striding towards the doors of the carriage. All my senses are on hyper-alert, and although it only takes a few seconds for me to reach the doors and stride through to the next carriage I know he hasn’t followed. He’s zipped up the bag again, returning whatever he removed, whatever he intended to use. The train slows and I slam the button to open the doors. The platform is full, everyone squashed together like sardines. They don’t move so I push through, stepping on a guy’s toes and almost knocking over some old dear.

  ‘Sorry!’ I shout behind me, and I race on without looking back.

  I see a sign for the toilets and I head there on autopilot. For years our bathroom has been my sanctuary, the only space in our house where I could escape, lock the door, regroup. I do that now, only the gap beneath the cubicle yawns wide. It’s cowardly to hide in here.

  I open the door, scan the sinks. No one around. I hold my wrists under the cold tap to cool down. Footsteps squeak across the tiles. An NYC baseball cap. My stomach clenches. He steps into a cubicle, thinks better of it, tries the one next door. I turn around to get a better glance. My certainty that it’s Luke begins to wane. When he catches my eye I realise with jolting relief that it’s not him at all. Same jawline, same hair, if he somehow maintained the same hairstyle from over twenty years ago and avoided grey hairs. Of course it wasn’t Luke, you moron. I give another sideways look just to be sure. He looks again, his brow furrowed as if to say, what you staring at?

  I press my palms on the edge of the sink and take a deep breath. Get a grip, coward, I tell my reflection. Luke is dead, mate. Luke is dead.

  I head to an internet café and do som
e searches. I Google ‘Luke Aucoin’ and ‘Theo Aucoin’ and a promising number of results flick up. I spend a good half hour trawling through them all. Half are to do with fashion, the other to do with a chef called Maurice Aucoin who turns out to be no relation at all.

  I try ‘Churchill house Paris France’. 475,000 results. With a sigh I start scrolling. Lots of hits about the war, about Churchill’s stint as a cavalry officer, about places he stayed. Roquebrune-Cap-Martin appears a few times. I click on a link. A house owned by Coco Chanel. Luke never mentioned anything about that, and it’s in the south of France. Did Luke say his folks were from the south? Where did I get Paris from?

  ‘Tu es fini,’ a voice says. I look up. A man is standing beside me. Greasy hair, heavy glasses. He points at the clock. ‘Your time is up. We have other customers waiting.’

  I scrape back the chair and stand up, digging in my pockets for more money. It’s all in sterling. I’ll have to go withdraw some euros from the bank.

  When I’m starting to feel woozy in a café on Rue La Fayette I recall Luke telling me about the time he ran away from home. He was nine or ten, bored to tears of his parents and Theo, so got up from the dinner table one evening, packed his bag and left the house. He managed to get all the way to Paris before a train inspector stopped him at the gate and alerted his parents. It took him two hours on the train, he said. Two hours.

  Quickly I jump up and head back to Gard du Nord, looking over the departure board. It means nothing to me, so I move to a map mounted on the wall. Normandy. Two and a half hours away. I go to the ticket desk and buy a ticket for the next train. It’s not until tomorrow morning, but I buy it anyway and head back through the darkening streets, intent on finding a room for the evening.